Saturday 14 December 2013

Little Update

I haven't been taking too many pictures as of late, because I haven't been to that many pictureworthy places, but here's a few from 2 events I went to recently:



Roppongi Hills Tower

These are from an event in the Roppongi Hills Arena where a good friend of mine was a guest speaker.

The guy in front and the one on the far right I met that night. The remaining four are me and three friends with me being the 2nd from the left.

Awesome picture that was taken after a friend did an awesome, superinspirational presentation on the importance of learning English for Japanese people.

Besides these 2 events, I've mostly spent time with friends, met a few cool new people and I recently got a chance to play futsal. I was the only person spending 10+ hours per week in the gym, so it was a little onesided, but I had a ton of fun nonetheless!

Business is still going smooth. The application is being made and should be done in about 5-6 weeks. The accompanying website is nearing completion aswell and will probably be done in about a week or maybe 2 tops. So pretty soon it's time to get the marketing strategy together. It's about time things would get a little busier, because I've been relatively bored as of late.

The gym's still going great aswell except for a week I had to take full rest, because of a shoulder injury. It seems to have fully recovered though so I'm back at it now. Even though I'm doing a very intense 6 days/week 2 hours/workout program, it's pretty relaxing for me. I've noticed that it takes very little mental effort on my part to complete the training, because I've become completely numb to the pain it takes to push my muscles to failure. The only moment that's actually hard is the cardio, where I can push really hard, which is probably why cardio has become my favorite part of my workouts.

I'm also toying with the idea of doing the Sea to Summit challenge in 2014. It's a yearly event where participants go from the Sea in Japan to the top of Mount Fuji in 24 hours. They start at dawn and reach the peak 24 hours later so they can see the sun rise. It's a 48KM hike with an average incline of 5% and at the end you have to climb Fuji to the peak.
The only issue for me is that I don't deal well with not sleeping. On top of that I kind of like a physical challenge so I'm thinking of doing it MUCH faster in like 13-14 hours, so I can get back down and quickly get to a bed and get a good night's sleep. It seems doable... somewhat, but INSANELY hard. Which sounds like fun to me, so I may decide to go for this.
The event is in July so after I finish my gym program in sometime March I may start training like a madman and try to do this. Should allow me to cross of another thing off of my bucket list while I'm at it which is running a marathon. But I'd want to run it in a good time, like sub 3 hours 15 minutes or something sounds like a nice target to aim for. Exciting stuff!

I also spent a lot more time thinking about life and happiness. I've come to understand parts of myself better and learned a few valuable lessons. On top of that I seem to have somehow fixed something that had been bothering me for a long time(maybe too early to tell for certain), although I'm not sure how I did it. However, thinking all of it over... none of the thoughts really seem significant/interesting enough in retrospect to share. I'm sure I'll blog about this subject again at some point in the future though.

Last but not least, I recently ate this delicious Unagi:
Best Unagi I've ever had

Thursday 5 December 2013

短期幸せの研究

This is the Japanese translation of my last blog!

このブログは九月のブログの続きであると言える。九月には何で偶に落ち込んだかを調べてた。
http://frankiestyn.blogspot.jp/2013/09/dissecting-my-own-psyche.html


最近何か気に成って来た。どうすれば将来に幸せに成るかにずっと気を付けてる。どうすれば将来に幸せに成るかそんなに複雑ではない。俺は何を達成したいかゴールにして、そのゴールを遂げる為に頑張る。

最近どうすれば短期で幸せを受けられるかに気を付けて来た。一日中嬉しいっていう事。凄く嬉しくて気合が入ってる期間もちょっと悲しくて気合を持ってない期間もある事に数ヶ月前気付いた。嬉しくて気合が入ってる期間を好むので、原因を調べようとし始めた。
ちなみに最近気付いたにも関わらず最近始まった事である訳ではない。プロポーカープレーヤーとして働いていたとも念がこう振れてた。もっともっと振れてたかも。あの時にポーカーの結果と結構親しく連係されてた。この理由で大体の人にプロポーカープレーヤーに成らないのをおすすめする。自分の幸せは百パーセント管理を出来ない事に依って振れるんだね。
さて何があってるかを調べ始めたら、何か気付いた。栄枯盛衰は世の習い。変わらないって思うくぜに、どうして偶に気が入ってないか原因に対して何かを発見出来ると思った。自分の人生を観察すると全然分からないから。俺の解決は短期幸せの研究!
 最もプライベート部分を除く

毎日の終わりには当日を一から五まで格付けして、この下に書いてある事を記す。
-なんである格付けをした。
-当日の最高の瞬間。
-当日の最低の瞬間。
-し直せるとしたら、何を変えるか?何を別にするか?

発見したことがある:
1)友達に会うとたいてい嬉しい。普通の日と違うし、交流が好きだし。
2)非生産的とか時間を無駄にするのが大嫌い。他の事をしたかった気持ちは良い気持ちではないから。
その上、数回はある事件の所為で数日から一週間位まで嬉しくなくなちゃった。かなり複雑でそんなに多くの事件をまだ書き記してないんだけど、絶対に気を付けて続ける。

一昨日と昨日はなんとか結構面白かった。良い日に成るはずだったけど、気がまあまあだった。理由は良く分からない。この間肩を怪我したので、運動を出来なかったからかもしれない。運動をするのが大好きだし、日課が変わったし。
他の気付いた事は今嬉しいかどうかに気を付け過ぎるのが自分を嬉しくなくする可能性。人生は永世じゃない事を分かってて、全部の瞬間を楽しみたいけど、そんなに気に成ってたらあまり楽しめない。リラックスすべきかな。

ここから人生の目的について説学出来るが、何れまたする。

他の資してる要素もあるかなと思ってるけど、このブログで相談しない。最も親しい友達はちょっと分かるかもしれなく、一人の人は絶対に分かってる。ちょっと複雑で俺もちょっと分からない事だ。

 是非研究をし続ける。どうして将来に幸せに成るかよく分かるんだけど、短期幸せについてもどんどん分かる様に成ると素敵だと思う!

日本語に翻訳出来た!!! \(^o^)/

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Short Term Happiness Research

(This is somewhat of a continuation of a blog I posted in September, where I was trying to figure out why I was feeling a bit down/sluggish sometimes)
http://frankiestyn.blogspot.jp/2013/09/dissecting-my-own-psyche.html


I've been thinking about something as of late. I've always paid a lot of attention to doing things that will lead to an awesome life in the future and thus hopefully longterm happiness. It's not too hard to know what to do to achieve longterm happiness and (although somewhat harder) it's not that hard to actually achieve longterm happiness either. I simply set goals I want to achieve and I work hard to get there.

Something I've been paying more attention to as of late is day-to-day happiness. Being happy right here right now in this moment. A couple of months ago I started to notice and pay more attention than before to the fact that I'd have periods where I was really happy and motivated and periods where I was not as happy and motivated. Prefering the happy and motivated periods, I set out to try and figure out what was going on.
A little footnote is that although I recently starting paying more attention to this, it's certainly not something new. I had swings like this just as much if not way more as a professional poker player where they were closely linked to how well I was doing in poker. Which is why I wouldn't recommend the professional poker lifestyle to all that many people, because your happiness is somewhat dependant on something that is not 100% in your control and it can be REALLY hard to deal with.
Anyway, when trying to figure out what was going on with my moodswings I realised, there'll probably always be ups and downs, that's the way life is. Nonetheless I felt like I should be able to figure out some causes as to why I was feeling a little down sometimes, because when I take a step back and look at my life I don't see why I would ever be down, unless maybe I am ill and in pain. So what I decided to do was, conduct research on my day-to-day happiness. Here's what I did:

 I had to cut out certain extremely private parts

At the end of each day before I go to bed I rate each day a number from 1 to 5 and write down:
-Why I rated it the way I did.
-The very best moment of my day.
-The very worst moment of my day.
-What I'd do differently if I could relive the day.

I've been doing this to try and gain some insight in what makes me happy on a day to day basis and why my moods have been swinging. There's some days missing here and there. A bunch when I fell seriously ill at the start of October and then about a month's worth when I was abroad. I really wish I would've done it during my travels too, because it could've given me valuable insight. A couple others recent ones are missing too. Mostly unproductive and kind of unhappy days where I didn't bother filling it in. The 18th of November(didn't fill it in) is the only day so far I'd rate a 1 in the past 3 months, although being very ill on the 3rd of October came very close aswell.
Overall I definitely think I am seeing some trends:
1) Whenever I meet with friends I generally have a good day. These days stand out from other days. They're not so monotomous and I guess I also just really enjoy socializing.
2) Being unproductive and wasting time pisses me off tremendously. The feeling I'd have liked to have done other things with my precious time is not a happy feeling.
Also I'm not sure yet, but there's been a few events that caused me to be unhappy for a couple of days up to a week. These are too complicated and I don't have enough of them yet to draw any conclusive evidence, but I'll definitely keep on monitoring these, because I think they may be the(or at least a) key to what I'm looking for.

Yesterday and today have also been quite interesting. For the most part they had all the ingredients to be good days, but overall my mood has been so-so. I'm not exactly sure why. One very possible cause is not being able to workout. I still have the muscle in my left shoulder/upper back that needs to rest for a couple of more days. The muscle doesn't bother me much during the day so it's not the cause of unhappiness, but it's not 100% yet so I couldn't go to the gym. This may have caused me to be less happy, because I enjoy the gym and because of a change of routine and maybe slight lack of structure.
Another thing I realised today while I was analyzing my own psyche on the train is that possibly paying so much attention to whether I'm happy or not is not good for my happiness. I guess I realise life is not forever and time is valuable and I want to consciously enjoy as much of it as I can and I don't want it to be over before I realise it. But doing so and focussing too much on enjoying things may make me enjoy those very things less. Just going with the flow and relaxing a bit more may be a good thing here.

I could probably go on a rant about the meaning of life here, but let me save that for some other time.

One other possible contributing factor is one I won't share with you in this blog. Some of the people closest to me may have some sort of clue what I'm talking about and 1 person knows me so well that this person knows without a doubt what I'm talking about. It's a bit complicated and it may or may not be contributing. I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'll keep up the research and hopefully learn even more things about what makes me happy on a day-to-day basis. I feel like I have the long-term happiness thing down quite well, hopefully I can master the short-term, day-to-day happiness aswell!

I was planning on translating this blog into Japanese aswell for practice, but I've already spent a decent bit of time on this. I may translate it tomorrow or something, because it's bound to be a good exercise. May take me quite a while though! But 哲学 is always interesting, so I may give it a shot.

Monday 2 December 2013

Quicky

This'll be a quick one, because I don't feel like I have that much to talk about. Reason being that I haven't been up to all that much as of late. Especially as far as business goes, I haven't had to do any work on the application. Development is coming along nicely with no hick-ups, so it's just a waiting game. The accompanying website has had hick-ups, the guys doing it have been bug-fixing for over a month now and every time they fix one there's 3 others that pop up. It feels like the coding is absolutely terrible and thus I'm going to have the same team who's building the application build a website. Fortunately enough a fairly small project, so now that it's in the hands of competent people it should be done pretty soon.

The lack of things to do has made me pretty unproductive. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I work more efficiently, harder and am happier in life when I am busy and have a ton of stuff to do. Maybe because I have to work harder to get everything done? Fortunately enough the JLPT N2 test yesterday kicked my butt and made me realise how terrible I still am at Japanese, thus I got motivated again to work my ass off at Japanese and many other things. I refocussed on my goals and what it is I want to accomplish in the next 5-10 years and hopefully that will keep me busy the rest of the year and next year.

Gym's been going fairly well, until sometime last week when I stretched/injured a muscle in my left shoulder/upper back. It's nothing serious, but kind of annoying. I thought it was mostly gone yesterday and completely gone today, so I went to the gym today, but 2/3 of the way through my workout I felt it again, so decided to be safe rather than sorry and skip the rest. I'll take tomorrow off again and maybe Wednesday aswell. Don't like it, but not much else I can do.

Last, but not least I recently visited Tokyo's #14 restaurant and one of Japan's top 50 restaurants and blogged about it in my food blog. Here's the link:

http://tokyofoodjournal.blogspot.jp/2013/11/1-michelin-star-french-food-at-one-of.html

That's it, I hope to get more done in the next few weeks so I have more to blog about next time!

Here's a picture of the first prototype of the mobile app:

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Hong Kong Trip Report

Trip to Hong Kong


On top of Singapore and Macau, I recently also spent some time in Hong Kong. I had by far the best time in Hong Kong out of all 3, but that may have been in a big part thanks to my amazing tourguide, Iris. I had met her on the ferry from Hong Kong to Macau and she had treated me to the best Chinese food of my life! I knew she travels back to Hong Kong every weekend and she had offered to show me around if I also happened to be there during a weekend. So, I sent her an email and we decided to take the ferry together on Friday from Macau and she said she'd show me around Friday evening and for most of Saturday.

Before meeting Iris at the Macau ferry terminal, I checked out of Hotel Lisboa and went to the City of Dreams to exchange some money. At Hotel Lisboa, a concierge handled my baggage and put it in the taxi's trunk for me. Because I didn't put it in there myself, I didn't make a mental note that I had to take out my suitcase when I arrived at the City of Dreams nor did my taxi driver remember that a suitcase was put in his trunk. So I paid, got out of the cab and went to exchange some money leaving my suitcase in the taxi's trunk!
About half an hour later waiting in line at the bank, it struck me: "I forgot my suitcase!". I rushed back to the Hard Rock Hotel(a hotel at the City of Dreams where I got out of the cab) and talked to the concierge. They called security who went through everything that had happened with me and set out to investigate using their security cameras. For a while I was pretty sure it'd work itself out eventually, but after about 30 minutes I was getting quite nervous that I probably wouldn't get it back. Fortunately enough after about an hour the superhelpful and friendly Hard Rock Hotel staff told me the cab was on its way with my suitcase and eventually I got my suitcase back just in time to rush to the ferry terminal and meet Iris.

As soon as I met Iris at the ferry terminal a supersmelly Chinese guy came up to us asking us for money for a ticket back to Hong Kong. It wasn't the first time I encountered supersmelly people in Macau, but this guy was something else. He did look presentable in a suit and presumably he was a businessguy who had gambled his last money away. Still strange he didn't have any credit cards left or anything. Either way, Iris being her supernice self eventually gave him the 20$ for his ticket back to Hong Kong and we also bought our tickets and got on our way.

During the ferry ride to Hong Kong I asked Iris what the ferry ride is like when the weather is bad. She recalled one ride back to Hong Kong where she had taken the last ferry before they stopped going because of a Typhoon. It sounded pretty freaking scary. And dangerous too! Especially when she mentioned there was a grownup man crying during that trip! Fortunately enough the seas were quiet when we took the ferry back to Hong Kong.

EPIC Bar in Hong Kong


After arriving in Hong Kong we took a cab to my hotel. Cabs in Hong Kong are just as cheap as in Macau, but they seemed a lot better to me, because in contrast to cabs in Macau they have seatbelts. Little did I know what kind of cab ride we'd experience the next day where some chauffeur went wild after we wanted to go to the ferry and take the ferry across the bay instead of him taking us to the other side. He drove like a maniac and a visibly disturbed Iris told me the cab driver kept saying things like:
"I'm going to kill us all"
"I'm going to hit someone"
"I'm going to crash into that car right in front of us" and then barely braking on time.
All the time acting as if he was speaking to someone on the radio. I obviously didn't understand the Chinese at the time and thought this guy was just in a mad rush, because he drove like a maniac and nearly hit someone at some point. After we got out of the cab and Iris told me, I was almost as shocked as she was.
Anyway, after we got to my hotel I checked in and dropped off my suitcase and then we took another cab to the Aqua Spirit Bar.

I've actually been to an Aqua restaurant in London which disappointed me and my friends severely. The Japanese food wasn't up to our (back then pretty low) standards for Japanese food and it was superexpensive. However, this place in Hong Kong they could've served me my most hated food and honestly I wouldn't have cared and still enjoyed myself. The venue is just amazing with one of the best views I had ever come across. I'm not gonna try describing this, I think it's much better I show you:




 They have a daily light show around 8PM!




Is that a SICK view or what? On top of that the food actually wasn't bad at all. Not amazing or anything and definitely a bit pricey for somewhat small portions, but considering you mostly pay for the view here I thought the food was surprisingly good.

Definitely FAR AND AWAY the best bar I had ever been and when we left I grabbed their business card in anticipation of a return visit the next time I'm in Hong Kong. However the place we went to the day after made me rethink that statement!


After dinner Iris showed me around the area and we walked along the pier for more amazing views of the world's #1 skyline. Here's the rest of the pictures I took:








Chinese Temple and Zodiacs


The next day Iris took me to a chinese temple nearby my hotel. Up till that point I had only seen Japanese temples and although I generally prefer modern city type of stuff, it was really interesting seeing how different Chinese temples look compared to Japanese ones. I also had my fortune told, by probably the worst fortuneteller ever! But it was fun nonetheless.






 Looks so much like a Fox, but I guess it's the Dog?
 Rooster?
 The Monkey reminds me of Kung Fu for some reason.
 Clearly Goat
 Horse, right?
 My favorite Zodiac statue. I thought it was a lizzard, but they don't have one so it must be the Snake.
 The Dragon looks a bit angry and seriously out of shape. Can't imagine him flying!
 Rabbit I think.
 Tiger?
 Ox presumably.



 Me trying to shake out exactly one stick which I need to have my fortune told.
Iris told my fortune meant that everything will only get better for me in life from here on out! SICK!

Hong Kong's City Centre


After the temple we took the underground to Hong Kong's city centre and ate some more Chinese food.

 Big shopping mall


 Dim Sum
 Some vegetable dish
 Tofu
 Some weird jelly thing with some chicken and vegetables and sesame dressing
Eel

This definitely beats Chinese food in the west quite hansomely. I didn't like the vegetable dish that much, but the tofu and weird jelly thing with chicken and sesame dressing were really nice. I do prefer Japanese Unagi/Eel over this Chinese version, but it was good nonetheless. The Dim Sum was good, but I remember eating better Dim Sum in one of the Macau casinos.

If Friday's bar was EPIC... there is no word in the English language to describe how awesome THIS bar is!!!


After our lunch Iris had planned for us to go to the peak, a mountain with a sick view of Hong Kong. We aimed to be there around sunset which is the perfect time, because you can see Hong Kong in daylight, see the sunset and see it during nighttime! On the way to the peak I took more pictures of various skyscrapers.








Having arrived at the tram and bus stop that leads to the peak, we found out that we weren't the only ones with the genious plan of going to the peak around sunset and it turned out we'd have to wait in line for 2 hours. We decided this was a waste of our valuable time together and decided to go to the OZone bar on the 100th floor of one of Hong Kong's tallest buildings. This sounded pretty freaking sweet to me! So we went to work finding a cab that could take us there. Sadly enough after about 30 minutes we still hadn't been able to get a taxi, so instead we asked at a hotel if there was a bar with a good view within walking distance. We were told to try the bar in Upper House, a hotel with what I thought was a not so cool sounding name.

After arriving at the bar called Café Gray on the 49th floor, my opinion of the place quickly changed. Not only was the view breathtaking, the way they had furnished the bar was simply fantastic. In the Aqua Spirit Bar from the night before, you couldn't sit anywhere near the windows, but in Café Gray you sit down right next to the windows in perfect couches! When we arrived it was still light:




But not long after the sun started to set:






And soon thereafter complete nightfall followed:






Even in the bathroom I couldn't resist to take a few pictures, because this has got to be by far the nicest bathroom I've ever been to!


 
I think these pictures speak for themselves!!  (^o^)

Afterwards we had to take the ferry across the Hong Kong harbour that's starting to turn into a river, because they keep turning parts of it into land.




Iris had to meet friends for dinner, so we sad goodbye and parted ways. The following day I flew back to Japan PRAYING that immigration would give me another tourist visa and would let me in, because I still don't have my investor visa. Fortunately enough I was let in without being asked a single question. Saweeet!

The best thing about Hong Kong is...


You may think that the most awesome thing about Hong Kong were the views of it's spectacular skyline, but you'd be wrong. While Hong Kong is definitely one of, if not the most beautiful city I've ever been to and while the views, especially from it's seemingly many bars on top of skyscrapers, are simply stunning! The best thing about Hong Kong for me was hands down my tourguide Iris.

Just like our dinner in Macau we had seemingly effortless endless conversations and I feel like I could've talked to her for much MUCH longer if I hadn't had to leave. At first we talked about pretty simple topics but by the end of Friday we started to talk about the more interesting things in life such as childhood experiences, religion and love. I can count the number of people I've ever had such deep conversations with in my life on 1 hand, the vast majority of which were with my mother. But never ever before have I grown so emotionally close to someone in such a short period of time(just 3 days!).

It was a wonderful hopefully not once in a lifetime, but definitely very rare experience. And to think we randomly met on a ferry makes it an even bigger coincidence! I'm sure we'll keep in touch and eventually meet eachother again some time some place.

Iris, thanks again for the wonderful time, amazing conversations and of course for showing me around! All the best to you and I hope to see you again sometime either in Japan, Hong Kong or some other place!

Last but not least, here's the picture we took together on the pier.


The best thing about Hong Kong is... spending time there with an amazing friend!